Blacks find pluses, minuses

Instead of such overt racism, many blacks in Utah County experience "racial battle fatigue," a term that describes how some minorities can feel worn down by those daily reminders that one's skin color is different and that they are members of a tiny minority. Smith said the problem isn't simply the frequent incidents but the constant vigilance she feels she must maintain when faced with such incidents.

"People will make the most idiotic, ignorant comments I've ever heard. In a different place in a different time in my life, we might be in a fight, but I have to handle it in a way that it doesn't reflect in a negative manner on every other black person in Utah County. When a white person speaks, they don't have to worry about representing all white people."

She is frustrated by some of the reactions she gets when she points out insensitivity.

"A lot of people would want me to say it's been a great experience living in Utah, and it has been because we've had so much help here, but when I say there is racism in Utah, they brush it off or get offended and take it personally instead of listening and dealing with it."

The feeling of being a distinct minority is never far away in a valley where 1 in 200 people is black and in a state where none of the 104 members of the Legislature is African- American, none of the police officers in Provo, which has 93, and Orem, with 88, is black, and of the 138 members of city and town councils in Utah Valley, one is African-American.

At a Provo/Orem Chamber of Commerce meeting earlier this month, not a single black was among the 115 businesswomen and men who ate lunch together at the Provo Marriott and heard annual reports from the cities' mayors.

A door prize given out after the chamber luncheon took aim at the lack of diversity. The prize was former NBA star Charles Barkley's book, "Who's Afraid of a Large Black Man?" Bob Craghead of Intrinsic Motivators gave away the book to advertise a race and diversity workshop he is about to launch for business people.

"White people don't think about race here because they don't have to," Craghead said. "But when you deal with it daily, it beats you down and it's tough."

Craghead agreed with Brigham Young University professor Cardell Jacobson's statement that whites have to work on helping other whites stamp out racism or ignorance or insensitivity because when blacks complain, the messages sometimes are discounted by whites as coming from "an angry black man."